Thousands of pills filled with powdered human flesh have been discovered by customs officials in South Korea, it was revealed today.

The capsules are in demand because they are viewed as being a medicinal ‘cure-all’.

The grim trade is being run from China where corrupt medical staff are said to be tipping off medical companies when babies are aborted or delivered still-born.

The tiny corpses are then bought, stored in household refrigerators in homes of those involved in the trade before they are removed and taken to clinics where they are placed in medical drying microwaves.

The Daily Mail report contains, en passant, the statistic that 38 per cent of women of childbearing age have been sterilized. As I always say, China’s problem is that it will get old before it gets rich: You can’t have your babe and eat it.

But no doubt Thomas “Why can’t we be more like China?” Friedman will see this as further evidence of the innovative thinking you get from the People’s Republic. In the print edition of NR the other day, I reviewed Robert Kagan’s book The World America Made. One of the saddest passages is when he acknowledges that Beijing is on course to become the world’s leading economic power (perhaps as early as 2016, according to the IMF) but that, with a little bit of political liberalization, this will be no different from the Anglo-American transfer of global leadership:

Just as the British could safely cede power to a rising United States, so Americans could have an easier time ceding some power and influence across the Pacific to a rising democratic China.